Mortising - Machine (Laguna, Powermatic), or Jig (mortise pal), or????

[Scott Rollins]

I use my woodrat from Chipsfly.com. It is a 3 axis mill if you have never seen one. It does mortices, tenons, dovetails. Too bad it doesn't clean up afterwards.

[Roger Lance]

When I made a king size mission style bed with nearly 200 M&T joints, I used a PM 719A (the model before the tilting table). Piece of cake. Thats a tool. IMHO, I don't think I could have done it with a plunge router (which I do use in some cases) and gotten the presision required for all those spindals to aligne. World of diference over a bench top mortiser,.I've never used a horizontal slot mortiser, so no comment there.

[Frank Drew]

If I were doing a ton of mortising, then I might want a dedicated machine. Even so, I really like the fit created by routers, and might prefer to set up a dedicated router station.

Same thing, really, a router cut mortise and a slot mortiser cut mortise, but with the latter having the advantage in power, flexibility, and speed of setup. You can get very inventive with a slot mortiser in ways that would be difficult to replicate with a router (doing some kinds of light milling work in metal, for instance). Cutting end mortises in rails for loose tenons is much, much easier with slot mortisers.

But for a small investment in time and money, a plunge router, a jig, and a few end mills will have you cutting precise mortises like a champ.

[Dave Tinley]

Don-
Since I am in the same quandry as you, I will share my thoughts.
I had a bench top vertical mortiser, sharpened the chisels, put on a xyz vise, but was never very happy with the cut. Sold it.
Right now I use my router table and sometimes a plunge router.
I have been looking at the horizontal mortisers and there are some decent ones out there. MLCS has one that you add a router to and it gets decent reviews. Plus you can do raised panels and moldings with it.
Grizzly has a slot mortiser, but I have not seen any reviews. Then there are the Luguna and other high dollar models. Its hard for me to justify that much money for a tool that I may use 20-25 percent of the time. To me thats cash flow that can be used for more lumber.

There are some people who have home made slot moticers, and that may be an answer. PM me if you are looking at the Morticing Pal, tho.

Keep us informed.
Thanks
Dave

[Greg Hines, MD]

speaking of using routers for mortising:
I have built a simple yet very accurate jig for this purpose (based different plans available). Using a spiral bit it works great.
Note that you don't have to worry about the mortise be dead center, as long as you don't change the position of the guides and use the same setting on the two pieces (that receive the floating tenon).
Attachment 94825Attachment 94826Attachment 94827

I have the same jig for my router, and it works great. Thick or thin stock can easily be handled, and offset mortises are a cinch.

Doc

[Neal Clayton]

i use a router too, have the leigh jig.

i've also used the grizzly ~900 dollar (don't remember the number) standalone mortiser, my stepbrother has one.

i like the router since it's one tool rather than the mortiser and the table saw, and therefore less room for error.
that said, both are equally accurate, but the benchtop machines are not from my experience.

i'm of the opinion that if i pay for a dedicated tool to make mortises it should not require any manual effort with hand tools on my part to make them fit.